In Public

I got out of the car ready to defend him and ended up seeing him with a stranger on his lap. What I did next wasn’t planned: I simply stopped being afraid.

She was crying drunk on my shoulder, saying nobody wanted her anymore. She had no idea that that very night, on the sand, I was going to prove exactly the opposite.

I never thought that seeing another man look at my naked girlfriend, legs spread open on the sand, would be the most arousing thing I’d ever feel.

No one on that trail could imagine what I was wearing under my clothes, or the wild woman the brush of the air ended up awakening in me that afternoon.

I’d been imagining it for weeks. That dawn I opened the gate, stepped onto the asphalt, and knew I wouldn’t stop until someone saw me.

I thought the spa was empty until I heard the laughter. Five young voices, five gazes that never left the wet white bikini against my skin.

My wife pulled a brochure from her purse and told me we had a meeting that afternoon. I had no idea that saying yes meant giving up being the only man in her bed for fifteen days.

When Lucía started staying over at our house, I still didn’t know how far she was willing to go. That night, in front of everyone, she took off her dress without anyone asking.

I was kneeling on the passenger seat when he whispered his girlfriend’s name. I looked up through the tinted glass: she was walking toward the car.

No one knew my truth. I went to the matches just to watch his legs, until that afternoon he looked up and held my gaze as if he knew everything.

I started by filling balloons with warm water so I’d feel like I had breasts. I ended up gluing them to my nipples and finding a pleasure I didn’t know I was looking for.

I had never gone out into the street dressed like that. That morning, with the house all to myself, I decided it was the day to fulfill the fantasy that had been keeping me awake.

Dressed like a man, but lace is hiding under my pants. That morning, in the last subway car, someone noticed and couldn’t take his eyes off me.

When I turned to wash my hands, I saw him in the mirror: tall, gray-haired, with his zipper open and his gaze locked on mine. My night was just beginning.

I wanted strangers to imagine her from afar. I didn’t expect her to stage the scene herself, or for my screen-side accomplice to show up with a flashlight in hand.

I had my fuchsia dress in my backpack and one idea in my head: that night, I was going to belong to whoever paid for me.

For months I’d let her dance alone, waiting for someone to push far enough. That night, a man taller than me finally did it.

She came out of the changing room with her back to me, wearing a bikini she had never shown me. I felt jealous. And, without knowing why, I started to feel something else too.

The theater was almost empty and the movie was an excuse: what mattered to me was her hand sliding up my thigh in the darkness of the back row.